The two new flagships from Samsungs pack in premium style and bespoke features

VISHNU ANAND

Bangalore, March 12 2018: Back in 1995, when the Late Amrish Puri finally released Kajol off his clutches and proclaimed "Jaa Simran Jaa, Jee Le Apni Zindagi'", he didn't just fulfil Shah Rukh's dreams in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, he redefined what a Bollywood climax looks like! What gave such a dramatic feel to that sequence (which still does unintentional PR for Indian railways), was the cinematographic brilliance in getting a slow motion shot impeccably right. Twenty three years later, slow motion is now called slow-mo and all it takes is a smart mobile device to capture such a video sequence with much higher quality, in HDR.

The recently launched Samsung flagships for 2018 -- the Galaxy S9 and S9+ -- has gone a step further and introduced super slow-mo, as one of the striking features to accentuate its focus on better camera and video performance. This feature is essentially powered by a motion detection engine that, when turned on, automatically detects movement within a frame and captures it in slow-motion in real-time. The fact that the lens that capture 960 frames per second (the highest for any smart phone), makes the 'footage' look rather dramatic. After shooting, this feature allows users to tinker with it -- create GIFS, add loops, and even add music from their library.

Eye of the beholder

The Galaxy S9 comes in a 12MP + 8MP camera configuration, while the S9+ comes with a 12MP dual camera at the back and an 8MP clicker at the front. What makes these cameras special is the dual aperture (ie the measure of how much the lens opens up to allow external light). Bigger the aperture, brighter the images. Most smart phones comes with fixed aperture. With the new Galaxy series, Samsung has created a setup where the dual aperture lens automatically adjusts and lets in more light when outside conditions are darker, pretty much how your eye operates. We tried out this intelligent toggle between F1.5 and F2.4 aperture, and were quite impressed with the results.

Music and more

The Galaxy S9 and S9+ come with AKG tuned dual stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support, which gives an immersive sound experience and repositioned the finger print more sensibly. The curved Super AMOLED display takes its legacy forward with the S9 (5.8 inches screen) and the S9+ (6.2 inches screen) with 3,000 mAh and 3,500 mAh batteries for with fast wired as well as wireless charging. Samsung has introduced something called intelligent scan -- a combo of facial recognition and iris scanning to ensure increased access security.

2D to 3D in real-time

A fun feature that Samsung has introduced in the S9 and the S9+ is what it calls AR Emoji, which uses a machine learning algorithm to map 100 facial features from the 2D image of your face and creates an animated emoji that moves, winks etc. One India-special offering kicks up data speeds by 2.5X. Normally, mobile devices latch on to a single spectrum band and the user gets speeds of that particular band. For S9 and S9+ Samsung has partnered with Jio and Airtel to introduce carrier aggregation where multiple spectrums merge into a single fat pipe offering us higher bandwidth, and faster

The Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ come with 4 GB RAM and 6 GB RAM respectively, at an asking price of Rs. 57,900 and Rs. 64,900 (for 64 GB variants) and Rs. 65,900 and Rs. 72,900 (for the 256GB variants). The the devices would be available in Midnight Black, Coral Blue and Lilac Purple. If a premium best-of-breed smart phone is what you are looking for, the S9 is a good bet. If a slightly larger screen and bigger battery excites you, go for the S9+.